Hopefully, since last I wrote, you had some time to look into the first two issues concerning the greener building of residential homes. If not, clicking here should give you another shot or at least bring you up to speed. In the Segment II we talked about energy and the quality of air. Now it is time for the other half of the battle; water & waste. 

Did you know that the average American household uses about 400 gallons of water every day?! It’s true; and in some areas, such as the western regions, this amount can be much higher. This amount is pretty staggering and does not need to be nearly this high in many cases. One way to become more efficient concerning your water usage is to do something as simple as upgrading to more water-efficient fixtures around your house. To put things in perspective, If one out of every ten homes in the U.S. upgraded to water-efficient fixtures, doing so could save more than 300 billion gallons and nearly 2 billion dollars annually if everyone were to follow suit! 

If you don’t really care about your water usage, consider this: depleting H2O reservoirs and groundwater aquifers can put water supplies at serious risk. The lower water levels get, the higher concentrations of natural contaminants, like arsenic, radon, or man-made pollutants, such as chemical agricultural wastes are present. This directly effects the overall health of the planet’s environment and its humans (such as yourself) health.

The other main component of residential greenness is something many have heard long ago in grade-school perhaps… The Three R’s. These are: 

                REDUCE 
                REUSE                 
                RECYCLE                 

Let’s break them down a bit and see how they apply to your residence. Reduce the amount and toxicity of trash you discard. This can be accomplished by seeking out and purchasing products and packaging which are durable and as non-toxic as possible. Reusing items in your home is a strong part as well. If you can’t repair something yourself, or don’t want to, try selling or donating it instead of just throwing it away. This is even better than recycling in that the item doesn’t even have to be reprocessed before it can be used again by someone else! Finally, recycling is a great way to incorporate green into the way your home is run. Recycling, which includes composting, kept 79 million tons of debris from landfills and incinerators in the year 2005. Help to keep this number grow even larger! 

Hopefully this third installment has given you a better awareness of green residences and how to move toward them if you haven’t already done so. In the fourth installment of this series, I will be looking into schools and similar facilities. We will discover how these buildings have become more green then in previous years and what developments are in the works to propel this trend for years to come. 

-LINKS-

Greener Buildings Part II 
300 
groundwater aquifers 
incinerators

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Conservation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.